Hell is in the Lacandon Jungle

The destruction of the Lacandon Jungle is perhaps the most infamous crime against nature in the history of Mexico. It hasn't even been offset by economic development or a solution to the problems of age-old poverty. Quite the contrary. The destruction of four-fifths of the jungle (including more than a third of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve) has gone hand in hand with the simple multiplication of an archaic and harmful mode of production with a very high ecological cost. The terrible indigenous practice of slash-and-burn for subsistence crops, primarily corn, has spread throughout the region. Fallen trees and shrubs are cut down with machetes or chainsaws and left to dry as fuel. During the dry season, the jungle is set on fire to destroy it and leave the land open, ready to be planted with corn. The productivity of this system is incredibly low—around one ton per hectare per year—which reproduces extreme poverty. The land is burned again during the new agricultural cycle, further impoverishing the soil. After two or three years, it becomes unusable and is abandoned, and new patches of forest are then destroyed. Forest soils—contrary to popular belief—are generally shallow and nutrient-poor, especially in hillsides and foothills (which is predominant in the Lacandon Jungle). Nutrients circulate in the vegetation in a marvelous, highly efficient ecological process.

When the forest burns, most of the nutrients are lost forever, and the stored carbon is released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), the greenhouse gas par excellence. Precious woods such as mahogany and cedar are not even harvested; they are consumed and disappear in the dense, black smoke and unbreathable air that envelops the Lacandon region during the dry season. All sustainable forest management initiatives and projects in indigenous communities in the region have failed, in part, due to the irregular and illegal nature of human settlements, the absence of legally recognized property rights, cultural impediments, and the absence of relevant local governance institutions. The same clearing process is followed to establish extensive cattle pastures. Only extremely low-productivity pastures that support less than one cow per hectare remain; bedrock is exposed, and the landscape is dotted with the carcasses of gigantic charred trees. To prevent the return of tropical forest vegetation, plots and pastures are burned again each dry season (to eliminate "weeds") until the soil is completely destroyed and loses all regenerative capacity. Already degraded agricultural plots are often used as pastures for the incredibly unproductive type of livestock farming practiced in the region. Very often, clearing and burning are carried out solely as a sign of possession by invading peasants or ranchers, in a context of illegality, conflict and violence, irregular occupation, control by organized crime, and chaos in land tenure and ownership. Widespread clearing and burning destroys the last remaining patches of rainforest, from which germplasm (seeds and spores carried by the wind, birds, pollinating insects, bats, and small mammals) could originate, capable of regenerating tropical forests in deforested areas through natural ecological succession.

Thus, the habitat for thousands of plant and animal species is also completely lost, condemning them to extinction. This is a vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, lawlessness, social delinquency, institutional collapse, and ecological devastation. Protected Natural Areas only partially survive. This is further tragic evidence of how, even in completely unfavorable contexts, Protected Natural Areas "work" as a conservation tool. They are better than nothing. Even worse, the disastrous "Sembrando Vida" (Planting Life) program of clientelist subsidies has caused the largest spike in deforestation in history. All of this occurs in a context of extraordinary population explosion. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the Lacandon Jungle region has been estimated at 3.5 to 4.5 children per woman, while at the national level, the TFR has shown a downward trend, reaching 1.6 children per woman in 2023. As children grow up, they demand more land, which is taken from supposedly fallow land through slash-and-burn, from scrubland or secondary forests, or even directly from the remaining primary tropical forest. Finally, in addition to the savage destruction of natural capital, the extermination of the Lacandon Jungle has generated massive cumulative CO2 emissions equivalent to the total annual emissions of Mexico. The government, indifferent or powerless, looks the other way.